Chapter 2 - The river
Atim snapped wide awake.
She could hear dogs barking in the distance.
Barking dogs meant that some of the local hunters had joined in the hunt for her.
It was bad enough she had been born a twin - an evil child, but to now be labeled a witch? That just complicated her already complicated situation.
The villagers would never stop hunting her, as every one of them who had suffered one misfortune or the other was already laying the blame for it on her.
Atim dropped from the branch where she had taken refuge for the night and took stock of her options. There were only two places where she could run to now, that the villagers wouldn't follow her. The first was the abandoned limestone quarry that was some distance to the west of her position, and the second was the evil forest on the outskirts of the village.
The quarry had been abandoned since some mining accident in 1928 that claimed hundreds of lives, and the villagers feared it because there were claims that the ghosts of the dead haunted it.
Atim preferred the quarry to the evil forest.
She and her sister had played there, and she knew there were no ghosts there. But to get there, she would have to cross the river, and everybody knew Mami Wata lived in that river.
Nobody crossed it unless they brought her a gift, and Atim was hoping her pursuers hadn't planned that far ahead.
The other option would be to try and circle around the villagers and hunters, to try and get to the evil forest, but Atim didn't fancy her chances of outrunning the hunting dogs - plus, she wasn't exactly the superstitious type, but there had to be a reason why it was called the evil forest.
Atim wondered to herself if it wouldn't have been better if she hadn't stopped to rest during the night.
She would have been much closer to the quarry and salvation.
Atim tried to gauge how far her pursuers were, by listening to how distant the barking dogs sounded, they didn't sound as far away as she would've liked, so she decided that heading to the quarry was the better choice.
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Atim reached the edge of the river just before sunset, which was just as well - as attempting to cross Mami Wata's domain even with the right offering at night, usually didn't end well for anyone.
She paused and surveyed the area before leaving the canopy of the trees.
Atim cradled the eggs she had found purely by providence. Okay, maybe not exactly providence...she had come across a monitor lizard raiding a nest. She had taken two. One to be used as payment for her crossing, the other for her to eat later.
Approaching the riverbank, she knelt down and offering a silent plea to Mami Wata, placed one of the eggs into the water and watched it float towards the middle of the river.
If it sank, then it meant her offering had been accepted and she could cross. But Atim watched as the egg floated there, with no plans of sinking.
Trying to cross, without approval wasn't an option. One would have to be truly desperate to risk being trapped in Mami Wata's domain in servitude for the rest of one's existence.
The sound of barking grew louder, and Atim could hear voices of the hunters as they called out to each other, and decided to risk crossing the river. A life of servitude suddenly seemed better than being dead.
Atim took out the second egg and placed it in the water offering a prayer to Anansa the mother of rivers. Maybe Anansa would be able to convince Mami Wata to let her pass. It was a desperate gamble, laughable even - but it was all Atim had.
The second egg floated to where the first egg still bobbed, then without a ripple to mark their passing both eggs sank below the surface.
Atim rose to her feet and started wading into the river anxious to swim across, but something strange happened - with each step she took, she found herself closer to the other bank, and for some reason, she could not understand...the water never rose past her knees, and she couldn't remember the river either being this narrow - or shallow at any point.
Atim, not one to take things for granted hurriedly crossed to the other side, and just as she got there, the sound of barking made her look behind her. She saw some of the hunters and villagers break from the canopy of trees and approach the bank of the river.
What shocked her, was that the bank she had only just crossed from, now seemed so distant. In fact, it was so distant that she could barely make out the faces of any of the people on the other side.
Sighting her on the far bank, a couple of the dogs rushed towards the river causing Atim to remember that the water was only knee-high.
But as She turned to run off, a soft voice said "My daughter, no run!"
Watching, as if in a trance, Atim realized that the dogs were no longer running. Rather, they were struggling to swim across. The dogs, for all their effort, were being drawn towards the center of the river, rather than the far-bank they were attempting to reach.
One of the hunters - probably the owner of the dogs called out to them in fear and started towards the river in a bid to save his dogs, but some of the other hunters and villagers dragged him back from the water's edge.
The surface of the water rippled with movement, as the undulating body of something serpentine broke the surface. The sinuous form moved through the water heading towards the helpless dogs, sections of its coils breaching the water's surface to reveal a muscular bulk covered in large scales.
The movement got to where the dogs were and then, they just...vanished. There was nothing, just silence. It was like they just ceased to exist.
The hunter whom they belonged to broke from the grasps of the people holding him and rushed into the water, pausing when the water got to his knees and staring into the river where only seconds before his dogs had floated helplessly.
He turned to look at his colleagues, but the look on their faces was one of horror - not of what had happened to his dogs, but at his setting foot in the river.
He had stepped into Mami Wata's domain...without making an offering...and now, it was too late. He was in the process of lifting his hands to beg the people on the bank to help him when the sinewy coils of the serpentine creature enveloped him. With a speed defying any comprehension, He was dragged into the water - his screams cut short just as they started.
And then just like that, the river calmed again.
Atim, her trance broken turned, and ran off into the trees.
The land here was set on a hillside and it gave her an elevated view of the river and its surroundings.
Every now and then, she would stop and look down at the river. Checking on her pursuers and to see if they were making progress. They were still gathered on the far bank of the river where she had left them. They looked very animated in whatever it was they were discussing, as they gathered together, but their actions, or rather the actions of the hunter had offended Mami Wata - It would take something really special for them to cross the river today.
Atim looked up at the canopy of trees on this side of the river. It was much thicker here, and it gave her an idea.
Thinking back to the hunters and their dogs, she decided to leave a trail for them to follow. She headed east for a bit, following the canopy of trees by the river's edge. After walking for a while, she found a tree with a low-hanging branch.
Climbing into the trees, She took off her scarf and tossed it to the wind. Like an eager accomplice, the wind snatched at the scarf blowing it through the trees at first, then as if realizing what Atim wanted, it dropped the scarf to the forest floor and moved it along - over leaves and branches following the treeline and heading east.
"Let the wind carry it wherever it wants. Let the dogs be chasing scents in the forest." Atim thought to herself.
Atim then carefully navigated back to where she hatched her mischievous plan and using the trees as her walkway, made for the top of the hill.
Getting to the top of the hill, Atim took one look at the beautiful sunset then she went over the hilltop, and headed down into the valley - towards the quarry and the safety it promised.